In­au­gu­rat­ing the Dig­i­tal Vil­lages, Jait­ley said, “The ini­tia­tive should be fol­lowed by other banks too."

ICICI Bank MD Chanda Kochhar said, "We have trans­formed 100 vil­lages across the coun­try in 100 days. We in­tend to ex­pand the num­ber of such vil­lages by an­other 500 by De­cem­ber 2017."

The pro­gramme in­volves end to end digi­ti­sa­tion of trans­ac­tions and other com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, pro­vid­ing vo­ca­tional train­ing to vil­lagers, ex­tend­ing credit fa­cil­ity and help­ing the vil­lagers to ac­cess mar­kets and earn a sus­tain­able liveli­hood.

Th­ese vil­lages are spread across the length and breadth of the coun­try, the vil­lagers here can use dig­i­tal chan­nels for bank­ing and pay­ments trans­ac­tions.